Also, it's intrinsically gluten free. I also made it dairy free by replacing the milk with low fat coconut milk, the cream with normal coconut milk, and the butter with coconut oil (all of which were excellent substitutes). The one thing about this recipe is that it's moderately difficult and definitely time consuming. Given cooking and cooling time, and the time you need to spend once the whole thing has been assembled, so that moist buttercream and hard dry crunchy merengue can come to some sort of hydroscopic equilibrium and produce a tender cake-like merengue requires roughly 9 hours. However, this can easily become 6 hours and then let the cake rest in the fridge overnight.

It's also worth noting that what you get at the end can only vaguely be described as a cake. It's perhaps more accurate to say that you have made a truly gigantic and impressively awesome candy bar, if candy bars were made out of gourmet ingredients rather than junk. A typical slice that left anyone trying it very satisfied was roughly 3 inches on a side (the rough height and width of it, and less than half an inch thick. The next time I make this, I'll make half as much. Also, if you are looking for a low fat or low calorie dessert, look elsewhere. This is a delicious and amazing creation made out of a whole lot of fat, eggs, and sugar.

I'm also going to experiment with using the merengue as the basis for a gluten free trifle – by using jam, berries, and vanilla custard instead of buttercream and chocolate, and expect the results to be equally good.